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UWI TODAY – SUNDAY 16 DECEMBER, 2018
70
th
ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE
RESEARCH
– ISSUE ARCHIVE SEPTEMBER 2009
Dr Carol Logie
,
FCDRC’s Administrative
Director
, has served on various boards and
organisations related to early childhood
education. She has chaired the
National Council
for Early Childhood Care and Education
(NCECCE)
. She is part of the
Bernard van
Leer Foundation
-sponsoredCaribbean Support
Initiative, and sits on the Executive Board of
the
World Forum for ECCE
. She has been
an international education consultant to the
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
and worked with the
World Bank
to develop
the first survey of early childhood provision
in Trinidad and Tobago. She is the Head of
Department, Early Childhood Education,
School of Education, UWI.
“Parents don’t understand the importance of being a role model, they think children only pick up best practices.”
Early Pioneers of
CHILDHOODEDUCATION
One of the areas
appearing to withstand the rigours of a
shrinking economic pie is early childhood education. In the
recent national budget presentation, theMinister of Finance
announced that the 50 Early Childhood Care Centres
(ECCE) promised in the last fiscal year would be completed
in this new one, and that an additional 50 would be started.
The focus on early childhood education has been so
politically marked that one could easily imagine that its
foundation stones had been laid only when the first ECCE
came to pass a couple years ago.
It goes way back actually, 21 years ago this month, to the
pioneering days of 1988, when the School of Education of
The UWI opened up its first “learning lab”, formally known
as the UWI Laboratory Pre-school, at the current site at St
John’s Road in St Augustine.
Back then, the School of Education (SoE) enlisted
the help of two Fulbright scholars from the US to design
an educational system for the region that recognised that
the first seven years in a child’s life were crucial in terms of
development.
The current administrative director of what has since
been renamed the Family Development and Children’s
Research Centre (FDCRC), Dr Carol Logie, was a
fundamental part of this daring new initiative in early
childhood education and she speaks with a creator’s pride
of its evolution.
To explore new ways of learning, new ways of teaching
had to emerge. No tertiary level programmes existed
regionally, so the SoE busied itself with designing and
introducing first the Certificate in Early Childhood Care
and Development and then the Bachelor of Education
(B.Ed.). In 1996, when the B.Ed. was introduced, there were
nine students, today, with the degree offering two separate
specialties—Primary and ECCE—student enrolment is at
120.
“We’ve been able to tie what we’ve been doing with the
growth and development in the region,” said Dr Logie, as
she explained how they could expand to the post-graduate
level and offer masters and doctoral degrees as well as post
graduate diplomas in education.
The FDCRC, as part of the SoE, is more than a school
for young children, it is actually a training centre for students
of education, many of whomwill actually be employed at the
State-run ECCE centres. Within an environment carefully
designed to appeal to all of the sense, teachers and students
interact in a marvellous routine that enables both parties to
learn from each other.
The notion of learning communities forms the
theoretical foundation of the Centre, based on psychologist
Lev Vygotsky’s theory of social interaction’s role in
the development of cognition. The Centre encourages
everyone—parents, teachers, students, family members—
who moves within the orbit of the child to see their
relationships as opportunities for two-way learning at every
level. Theoretically, people become each other’s students.
Thus, the approach at the Centre emphasises early
empowerment of children to make decisions and take
responsibility for decisions and to find socially appropriate
ways of interacting with each other.
Dr Logie, who has been working at various levels in the
area of early childhood education, has a broad and uniquely
detailed knowledge of its complexities and its relationship to
national development. In conversation, she connects every
strand of thought to development, and it is as clear that she
has had to make the case several times as it is that she firmly
believes in the link.
People don’t quite see that link, she says, don’t realise
that the state of Trinidad and Tobago, which everyone
complains about, and the behaviour of the youth which they
lament, are connected to their own misbehaviours.
The children are looking at the adults, and we have to
look at the state of parenting, the values you carry, she said.
“It’s not about whether you’re single or not,” it’s about the
values you communicate.
“Parents don’t understand the importance of being a
role model, they think children only pick up best practices,”
she said. “We can see it on the roads, we can see it in the way
they relate to children at home,” we can see it in the poor
relationships that children witness.
“We have to stop as a society and examine what we
are doing,” she said, citing the use of corporal punishment
as one sure way to perpetuate violence. “Children have to
understand that they have to find other ways to deal with
problems,” she said. “We need our children to understand
[what it means to have] a caring, loving, warm environment,
and to bring a new learning experience to them.”
PHOTOS:ANEEL KARIM
B Y V A N E I S A B A K S H
